One or more aspects of the present invention relate to web browser technology, and more specifically to a method for ensuring integrity of a displayed web page in a client-server infrastructure design and to a corresponding client-server infrastructure. Still more specifically, one or more aspects of the present invention relate to a data processing program and a computer program product for ensuring integrity of a displayed web page in a client-server infrastructure.
A field of an aspect of the present invention is web-based information, where web content is displayed together with additional content (e.g. advertisement) although not requested from the user (web content consumer). Therefore, to suppress not requested content, today's web browser technologies can be enabled for prior art content blocking However, the interest of the web content provider and especially their paying customers is to ensure that delivered content cannot be blocked from displaying.
A user requests a web page from a content provider (server side) using a web browser (client side). The web browser retrieves the requested page from the provider's web server. From the user's point of view, the delivered web page consists of user-requested content and not requested content (provider-added content), e.g. advertisement. In prior art web browser implementations, the user is able to apply content blockers and url filter lists which automatically avert loading and displaying the not requested content, or by removing the representation of the not requested content from the document object model (DOM) of the web page using browser-executed scripts (JavaScript, Flash) or plug-ins.
The content provider has no means to ensure that the document object model (DOM) remains unchanged such that the delivered web page is displayed as an entity. Especially, with simple means on the client side, the provider-added content can be blocked at the client side.
In the Patent Application Publication WO 2011/046685 A1, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, a method and a system for linking media components are disclosed. The disclosed system and method for linking media components include a processor that executes a handshake protocol according to which a video component is rendered conditional upon receipt of notification of rendering of an associated media component. The system and method additionally perform a keyword comparison algorithm to determine a relevancy between the video and other associated media component. For the linking of media components an external module is used, wherein content blocking is not prevented, thus, web page integrity is not ensured.
In the Patent Publication U.S. Pat. No. 7,152,091 B2, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, a contents distributing method and a contents distributing program are disclosed. The purpose of the disclosed method and program is to present advertisements properly to users. To realize this, a web server sends necessary related information, which includes links for download, to a client machine in accordance with a download request of the client machine. When the client machine requests start of download, by use of the link the web server, in response to the start of download request, distributes designated predetermined contents, and an advertisement supply server distributes predetermined advertisement contents. When an instruction from the client machine of forced termination of distribution of advertisement contents by the advertisement supply server occurs, the advertisement distributing server terminates distribution of advertisement contents and sends a forced termination flag, which shows forced termination of distribution, to the web server. The web server, in response to reception of the flag, ceases distribution of contents. The disclosed method and program are based on server-side components and the scope is the distribution, so that a web page as a whole is not covered but single links (URLs) within a web page. Further content blocking is not prevented. As a result, web page integrity is not ensured.